In introducing a new national health care proposal, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said lawmakers dealing with it will "follow in the footsteps of those who gave our country Social Security and then Medicare." Precisely.
Pelosi, D-Calif., touted the 1,990-page bill last week and said she hopes it comes up for a vote in the House this week. If so, it should be rejected.
The speaker did not seem to understand that she was pointing out the very problem that has many Americans concerned with health care proposals: cost. Both Social Security and Medicare, not to mention other entitlement projects such as Medicaid, have proven to be vastly more expensive than their proponents promised when the programs were established.
We are not talking about just a few billion dollars, either. According to one published report, Medicare has a $40 trillion unfunded liability. Despite increases in the amounts Americans pay for Social Security, that program also is deeply underfunded. And speaking of runaway health care costs, the Medicaid program's spending increased by 24.7 percent between 2008 and 2009.
Estimates of the cost of a massive new national health care program have ranged between $800 billion and $1.1 trillion over 10 years. But much of the estimates depend on hundreds of billions of dollars in health care "savings" liberals in Congress claim they can achieve.
Really? Savings like those in Medicare and Medicaid? Savings that never materialized - that became additional burdens on taxpayers?
Pelosi is absolutely right - and that is reason to reject her proposal.